Cam Newton’s involvement in a dustup at a youth 7v7 football tournament on Sunday has led to a week’s worth of commentary on sports radio and TV. On Friday during his “4th and 1″ podcast, Newton weighed in.
“I scrambled, and I should have stayed in the pocket,” Newton said.
But that was about the only joke on the matter the former Auburn Heisman Trophy and NFL MVP Award winner had on behavior for which he said, “There’s no excuse. There’s really not.”
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“The truth of the matter is this,” Newton said. “Me being in my position, I should have never put myself in that position. That’s just the truth. Because even then, that (expletive) could have got ugly, like, for real. It could have. And that’s why I’m trying to bring the seriousness to the situation.”
Videos of the incident after a youth 7v7 tournament in Atlanta showed Newton grabbing and slinging a man, being punched in the head and restrained by staff members and security.
“This is what I really want the narrative to be,” Newton said. “To every single high school player, to every single person of influence, to every single athlete, use my situation as a way to understand that in one moment, in one decision, your life could change just like that. I let my emotions get the best of me, and it should not have been called for. Simple. And with that, I apologize to anybody affected -- that’s Steph, that’s TJ, that’s their organization, that’s C1N, my organization; that’s my players, my parents, my staff members.”
Through his C1N organization, Newton has sponsored a youth 7v7 football organization since 2011, the year he was the first selection in the NFL Draft.
The two men who have identified themselves as squaring off with Newton – brothers TJ Brown and Steph Brown – are former coaches in the C1N program who now have an organization focused on wide-receiver development, Top Shelf Performance.
In a radio appearance on Monday, TJ Brown said Newton was “just talking crazy to us for no reason.”
“There was a lot of talking on both sides, on all sides,” Newton said. “Let’s just put it like that. I don’t want to point the finger and say this person said this or that person said that. It’s all in the nature of sports. …
“It starts with words, and it should have ended with words. That’s it. I’m disappointed in myself by letting it escalate to what it did. And that’s why I’m apologetic.”
Newton said he should be too accustomed to trash talk to react as he did.
“Everywhere that I go, people talk,” Newton said. “People say, ‘Yo, why you didn’t jump on the fumble? Hey, yo, Von Miller your daddy. Hey, yo, Mac Jones took your job. Hey, yo, Brock Purdy is better than you. Hey, yo, you a free agent.’ That’s normal.
“I’m used to playing in front of 100,000 people and millions watching, and I let one person dictate how I feel. I can’t do that. But I did that then.”
Newton said he hoped the players in his program would take note of his behavior and learn something from it.
“I can’t sit up here and say, ‘Hey, bro, you need to be bigger than that,’ then all of a sudden, I do that,” Newton said. “And that just goes to show you, you got to always stay in control of your emotions. …
“Now more than ever I can prove to them and show to them, like, ‘Bro, that’s some dumb-ass (expletive) that I did. Learn from that.’ Y’all see me fighting off people. That’s not what I want y’all to dwell on. What I want you to dwell on is this: If he sucker-punched me and knocked me into a coma, my football career is over. If somebody grabbed a pistol out of self-defense – ‘Naw, bro, he’s 6-5. Bro, I can’t go toe-to-toe with that (expletive)’ – it’s over with. …
“It don’t matter if you was a five-star recruit. It don’t matter if you had a scholarship to Georgia. It don’t matter if you had a scholarship to Auburn. That don’t matter no more. You’re going to jail. Or you’re going underneath the ground. So I have to use my story to empower the next generation, and that’s all I want to do.”
No one will be going to jail after Sunday’s incident. Atlanta Police reported Newton did not want to pursue charges.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.